Ethiopian Airlines signs MoU to help children with cardiac illness
Ethiopian Airlines Group has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Health (MoH), The Children’s Heart Fund of Ethiopia (CHFE) and the Rotary Ethiopia (RE) on Thursday.
The agreement will enable Ethiopian Airlines to provide free round-trip air transportation services to Bombay, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai in India for a total of 200 passengers including the 100 child patients and their accompanying attendants.
The MoU is entered into by the three parties to particularly cover 100 children and 100 attendants whose medical and local expenses in India will be covered by Rotary International.
“The agreement is basically about the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) provided by our Airlines,” said Mesfin Tassew, CEO of the Ethiopian Airlines Group in a presser on Thursday held at the Headquarters of the MoH.
“We’ve also discharged our CSR during the initial periods of the Covid-19 pandemic,” he added.
CHFE is mandated to actively participate in selecting the patients, facilitating travel documentation and clinical correspondence with various organizations when required.
MoH, on the other hand, will involve in obtaining all the necessary permits, approvals and legal and administrative supports required for the children and their caretakers to travel and get the medical help by Immigration and Citizenship Service.
Meanwhile, RE will liaise with Rotary India to obtain key information on the list of hospital medical doctors, accommodation details where the caretakers stay for the duration of the children’s treatment.
Dr. Lia Tadesse, Minister of Health said that the prevalence of non-communicable diseases in Ethiopia is high.
Another MoU has also been signed between the MoH and CHFE to strengthen the free cardiac surgery medical services, represented by Dr. Lia and Salahadin Khalifa, Board Chairperson of CHFE, respectively. Under this agreement MoH is expected to facilitate the provision of medicines and other medical utensils.
